Charter school educators are big on “grit,” that teachable character trait that helps at-risk students persevere to and through college. As a movement, charter schools have learned our own lessons about grit. We started with grand aspirations, to which we still fervently hold, but we also know that progress never comes as fast as one would like. We have learned, as well, that the problems we are working on aren’t solvable with a single tactic or strategy.

Joe Nocera, writing in his new column on The New York Times Op-Ed page, accuses the education reform movement of hubris and prescribes reformers a dose of humility as to what reform can and cannot accomplish. I’ll leave to others to point out that the beliefs attributed to the movement are straw men. But given that there is clearly such a perception, a glimpse at how humble most actual reformers are is certainly worthwhile.

Many years ago, I sat at LaGuardia airport with a group of talented school leaders, including David Levin,